I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary OliverRead
Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house of many rooms, and leave him alone in each of them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of exploration and personal experience in understanding complex ideas.
Mary Oliver's quote suggests that instead of simply guiding someone through an experience, it's more valuable to invite them to explore a variety of perspectives and insights independently. By leading them into a 'house of many rooms,' she implies that there are numerous layers and facets to explore, encouraging readers to engage deeply and meaningfully with the material on their own terms.
Themes
ExplorationUnderstandingIndependenceLearningPerspective
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about teaching methods that promote critical thinking.
More from Mary Oliver
All quotes →At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.
Mary OliverRead
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
Mary OliverRead
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Mary OliverRead
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
Mary OliverRead
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
Mary OliverRead
Similar quotes
I remember once going to see him [Ramanujan] when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways."
G. H. HardyRead
Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.
Baltasar GracianRead
Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.
Nancy GibbsRead
Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but most prized when polished.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
This is the first lesson ye should learn: There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, it doesn't behoove any of us to speak evil of the rest of us. This is a universal law, and until one begins to make application of same, one may not go very far in spiritual or soul development.
Edgar CayceRead